REVIEW: Home, I'm Darling (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

My favourite aspect of Home, I'm Darling could be considered a spoiler, so I'll clue you in at the end and give you fair warning. But it's no spoiler to say that this play, written by Laura Wade and directed by Theatr Clwyd's artistic director Tamara Harvey, is a real blast, daddy-o!

Judy and Johnny are in love with the 1950s: the threads, the nests, the frocks, the decor, the sounds, the chariots, the designs, the works! They first met through their mutual love of the period and became soul mates, visiting 1950s events such as JiveFest and indulging their passion with their friends Fran and Marcus. Both have well-paid gigs (Judy's better paid than Johnny), but one day, Judy decides she's had enough of her high-flying managerial job in finance, and the couple agree she should cop a breeze, and become a housewife instead. Rather, a 1950s housewife...

REVIEW: Uncle Vanya (Theatr Clwyd, Mold)

OK, let's get the headline out of the way first - Jamie Ballard is simply extraordinary in (and as) Uncle Vanya. Voted by the Guardian as one of the "ten best Hamlets ever", Ballard is an absolute revelation as a man whose entire life has been dictated to and shaped by other people's, whether it be the death of his sister, an unrequited love, or his supercilious brother-in-law. Vanya is one of life's great losers, and Jamie Ballard not so much plays the part as inhabits it.

One of the biggest problems some people have with theatre is the suspension of belief. When you watch a film or TV drama, you already know subconsciously that none of it is real, and you accept that, because you're watching these people on an oblong flatscreen several feet in front of you, like a window into a universe of fiction. But when you're at the theatre, sitting just feet away from a live action performance, you're being asked to believe that the drama is really happening right in front of you, as in life, and that can be harder for some people to swallow. Sometimes, audiences treat it as a challenge - "Convince me!" they smirk. "Convince me that you're really in that three-walled kitchen and feeling suicidal!"

The magic of live theatre is when the audience is utterly convinced that what they're witnessing is real, when they are duped into accepting the facts of the fiction before them because the talent and experience behind it is just too damn good. Achieving verisimilitude is a constant ambition for theatre makers, and director Tamara Harvey achieves it in spades in Theatr Clwyd's Uncle Vanya.

INTERVIEW: Actor Jamie Ballard on Uncle Vanya at Theatr Clwyd

In 2010, the Guardian's Susannah Clapp listed actor Jamie Ballard as one of her "ten best Hamlets", alongside high profile figures such as Henry Irving, John Gielgud, David Tennant and Mark Rylance. Jamie played the Prince of Denmark in Jonathan Miller's production at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory in 2008, but is now swapping tragedy for comedy as he's about to take on the title role in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya for Theatr Clwyd in Mold.

But hold on. People don't generally associate the 19th century Russian playwright with laughs and giggles, do they?

"Chekhov thought of his plays as comedies," says Jamie. "It was only his creative relationship with Constantin Stanislavski [the Russian theatre practitioner who staged a pioneering version of Chekhov’s The Seagull in 1898] that made the perception of his work all heavy and serious."

INTERVIEW: Tamara Harvey, Artistic Director of Theatr Clwyd

When Tamara Harvey talks about Junkyard – the new musical from the prestigious pens of BAFTA-winning playwright Jack Thorne and Oscar-winning composer Stephen Warbeck, which runs at Theatr Clwyd until April 15th – she gets a little emotional.

A co-production between Theatr Clwyd, Bristol Old Vic, Headlong and Rose Theatre Kingston, Junkyard is an honest and witty coming-of-age story about friendship and standing up for what matters, and features a cast of bright young talented actors.

“I’m so proud of this piece, it slightly shakes me up,” admits Tamara, who recently celebrated her first year of programming at the Mold production house. “Junkyard was one of the first scripts I was sent when I got the job. I read it and fell in love with it. It’s like Goodbye Mr Chips but set in Bristol in the 1970s. It’s that inspirational teacher story but with a twist. Any story that has that ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ moment chokes us up because we’ve all had that inspirational teacher or leader.”